The present invention relates to an apparatus for sorting spent tubes and more particularly to an apparatus that automatically separates spent tubes with residual yarn thereon from clean tubes during recycling.
Spent tubes doffed from automatic winders are recycled for reuse at spinning frames. In such recycling it is necessary that only clean tubes be reused and that any tubes with residual yarn windings thereon be sorted out and cleaned before reuse. This involves either an expensive manual operation to assure reliability or a less reliable, but still expensive, automatic operation.
In co-pending parent U.S. patent application Ser. No. 725,015, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,681,230, there is disclosed an automatic tube sorting apparatus that is relatively inexpensive and reliable. In that apparatus the tubes are carried on an intermittently advancing conveyor and a tube ejecting device reciprocates along the length of the tubes during dwells in conveyor movement. The ejecting device has a tube contacting element that slides along clean surfaces of tubes without causing ejection so that clean tubes stay on the conveyor, but the tube contacting element engages any residual windings of yarn on tubes to thereby force tubes with residual windings to move longitudinally and out off the conveyor so that they can be cleaned completely before recycling.
The present invention is an improvement in the tube sorting apparatus of co-pending parent U.S. patent application Ser. No. 725,105, now U.S. Pat. 4,681,230 and provides enhanced sorting reliability with resulting increased efficiency in production results of the subsequent winding operation.